There came no answer.  He was gone, and through the light veil of the encroaching mists she could see him shearing his way through the leaden-coloured sea.

She remained motionless, her eyes straining after him.  He was swimming easily, with a powerful overhand stroke that carried him swiftly away from the shore.  A little sigh of relaxed tension fluttered between her lips.  At least, he was a magnificent swimmer—­he had that much in his favour.

Then her glance spanned the channel to the further shore, and it seemed as though an interminable waste of water stretched between.  And all the time, at every stroke, that mad, racing current was pulling against him, fighting for possession of the strong, sinewy body battling against it.

She beat her hands together in an agony of fear.  Why had she let him go?  What did it matter if people talked—­what was a tarnished reputation to set against a man’s life?  Oh!  She had been mad to let him go!

The fog grew denser.  Strain as she might, she could no longer see the dark head above the water, the rise and fall of his arm like a white flail in the murky light, and she realized that should exhaustion overtake him, or the swift-running current beat him, drawing him under—­she would not even know?

A sickening sense of bitter impotence assailed her.  There was nothing she could do but wait—­wait helplessly until either his return, or endless hours of solitude, told her whether he had won or lost the fight against that grey, hungry waste of water.  A strangled sob burst from her throat.

“Oh, God!  Let him come back to me!  Let him come back!”

The creak of straining rowlocks and the even plash of dripping oars, muffled by the numbing curtain of the fog, broke through the silence.  Then followed the gentle thudding noise of a boat as it bumped against the jetty and a voice—­Garth’s voice—­calling.

She rose from the ground where she had flung herself and came to him, peering at him with eyes that looked like two dark stains in the whiteness of her face.

“I though you were dead,” she said dully.  “Drowned.  I mean—­oh, of course, it’s the same thing, isn’t it?” And she laughed, the shrill, choking laughter of overwrought nerves.

Garth observed her narrowly.

“No, I’ve very much alive, thanks,” he said, speaking in deliberately cheerful and commonplace accents.  “But you look half frozen.  Why on earth didn’t you put the rug round you?  Get into the boat and let me tuck you up.”

She obeyed passively, and in a few minutes they were slipping over the water as rapidly as the mist permitted.

Sara was very silent throughout the return journey.  For hours, for an eternity it seemed, she had been in the grip of a consuming terror, culminating at last in the conviction that Garth had failed to make the further shore.  And now, with the knowledge of his safety, the reaction from the tension of acute anxiety left her utterly flaccid and exhausted, incapable of anything more than a half-stunned acceptance of the miracle.